"Your cheatin' voice"/ "Sexting couples have poorer relationships"

Sept. 30, 2017 "Your cheatin' voice": Today I found this article by Lisa Bonos in the Edmonton Journal.  This is a dating article, but also a psychology article:

Apparently all we needed to determine that Jay-Z had indeed cheated on Beyoncé was a sample of the rapper counting from 1 to 10.

According to a recent study published in Evolutionary Psychology — “Your Cheatin’ Voice Will Tell on You: Detection of Past Infidelity From Voice” — undergraduate students could accurately assess whether someone had cheated on their committed romantic partner just by listening to a recording of their voice. 

The study notes that a person’s voice can communicate a lot of information about them irrespective of the content: A person’s sex, race, social status, personality traits — even their height and weight, and whether their body or face is symmetrical — can all be deduced by voice alone. 

“Voices relay important information pertaining to mating success and sexual behavior,” the study says.

Knowing how revelatory voices can be, Susan M. Hughes, a psychology professor at Albright College in Pennsylvania, delved into a database she had of voices counting from 1 to 10.

Hughes and her fellow researcher, Marissa A. Harrison, asked study participants to listen to samples of 10 women’s and 10 men’s voices. “Half of the speakers for each sex reported that they had sexual intercourse with a person outside of a previous or current, exclusive and committed relationship at some point in their lives (i.e., were ‘cheaters’), and the other half reported never cheating on their partners,” the study noted.

Women were influenced by perception as well; they were more likely to rate men as being untrue to their partners but weren’t necessarily more accurate in those estimations. 

This might be because women are more suspicious of men than men are of women, the study noted; men also are more likely to self-report having cheated on a partner.

The study’s researchers couldn’t determine why humans are so good at reading one another’s voices, just that we are. “While we cannot exactly pinpoint all the features about a voice that our perceptual system is using to make this assessment, we know that pitch plays a role, but does not represent the entire picture,” the study concluded.

“Other vocal cues such as clarity of articulation may have also contributed to perceptions of infidelity,” the study said. “For example, masculine males tend to display less clarity in their speech and show phonetic patterns indicative of masculinity, which in turn could be associated with infidelity threat.”

It’s also possible, Hughes said, that certain personality traits — such as extroversion — that are evident in a voice, could signal a greater likelihood of being unfaithful. “Extroverts show greater variation in fundamental frequency, greater voice quality, and fewer silent pauses … and high extroversion strongly predicts infidelity,” the study found.

Interesting stuff, but how does this study relate to real life? Because voices contain so much information about a person, Hughes recommends always speaking to a romantic prospect before meeting up that first time. 

“It would be fine to be a blind date, but don’t go on a deaf date,” Hughes says. And, yes, going on a first date where you matched online and made all the arrangements via text qualifies as a “deaf date.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/09/26/he-sounds-like-a-cheater-doesnt-he-you-can-detect-infidelity-in-a-persons-voice-study-finds/?utm_term=.eaf8e12550a9

Oct. 23, 2021 My opinion: Before going on a date with someone you meet online or an app, you should ask the more important questions/ deal breakers.

1. Do you want to have kids?  If he or she wants to have kids and you don't, than that's a big deal breaker.  Having kids is a big lifetime decision that affects both your lives greatly. 

2. Why are you on this site or app?  If he or she is here for something casual and you want a serious long term relationship, then you guys aren't a match.

Jan. 30, 2018 "Sexting couples have poorer relationships": Today I found this article by Claire Theobald in the Edmonton Journal:

Using sexting to spice up your sex life may damage the quality of your relationship, according to new research led by the University of Alberta.

The study found while those who regularly send racy messages and photographs to their partner report greater sexual satisfaction, they also have more conflict and feel less secure in their relationship, said Adam Galovan, a family scientist in the University of Alberta’s department of human ecology.

“These folks want to get to the end goal (a good relationship), without doing the hard work of talking, listening, and spending quality time together,” Galovan said in a news release Monday. “They need to put the phone down and spend some time together nurturing the relationship, instead of shortcutting with sexting.”

The study sampled 616 Americans.

The report found those sexting also showed lower levels of commitment to their partners, were more likely to use pornography and exhibited infidelity on social media.

Frequent and hyper sexters — those who send sexual messages and photos anywhere from several times a week to multiple times a day — also reported high degrees of “technology interference” in their relationship, where their partner gets distracted by texts or emails during what should be quality time, such as face-to-face conversations or leisure activities.

“Sexting doesn’t seem to be a feature of a healthy relationship,” said Galovan.

The study was conducted in partnership with Michelle Drouin of Indiana University — Purdue University Fort Wayne and Brandon T. McDaniel of Illinois State University. The research is part of the Couple Well-Being Project, a larger study exploring the dynamics of couple relationships.

http://edmontonsun.com/life/relationships/sexting-couples-have-poorer-relationships-watch-more-porn-less-committed-u-of-a-study/wcm/52002e2d-461c-45e8-b334-c63d4be2b6fe